Online advertising typically includes posting advertisements (ads) on the Internet. The online ads may include a marketing message, and a user may be able to click on the ad, which typically takes the user to another web page for a product or service being marketed in the ad. Online ads may be provided in many forms, such as text ads, image ads, banner ads, etc. A banner ad is an ad embedded in a web page and often includes text, images, video, sound or any combination of those elements.
Ads are usually purchased from an ad service or an ad network, referred to as ad vendors herein, in order to have the ad placed on a particular web site. For example, search engines typically offer ad services whereby an advertiser pays to have their ads posted on the search engine web site or other affiliated web sites. Many web sites, in addition to search engines, offer similar services for posting online ads for companies or other entities.
In many instances, the online ads are required to be posted for a certain period of time and are required to be posted in certain locations on a web site or may be required to be posted in response to certain conditions being met. Many entities engage in sophisticated online advertising campaigns where they are competing against competitors for ad space and they are placing many ads across many web sites. It is difficult to track the web sites to determine whether the web sites are posting their ads, and whether the ads include the proper content and are provided in the proper web page and in the proper location on the web page.